Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

THE CHOLERA OF 1867. 385
turn through the houses of the poor to carry them aid, give
advice, and watch over them ;
the soldiers gave up their straw
mattresses to the hospitals offered ; spontaneously to go and
nurse the sick in the lazzarettos and private houses, and went
there and performed their duties courageously and cheerfully to
the end.
In the places where there were no druggists, they went
and distributed the medicines in the shops, superintended by
military doctors, and they even carried them to the houses
when it was necessary. In other places where even the shops
for the necessaries of
life were closed, they had them opened
by force, and they themselves provided for and superintended
the sales. Often they were obliged to keep the market open ;
a part of them watching over the sale of the articles, and the
others maintaining the order and peace which were continually
threatened. Very frequently, either in the villages or cities,
they had to make and bake bread, a labor which no one
wished to perform from fear lest in perspiring they should contract
the cholera ;
and not infrequently they were reduced to
helping the carabineers and policemen sweep the streets and
houses of the poor, because there was no one else who would
make that dangerous exertion. There were the less humble
but not less unusual and difficult duties which often fell to the
officers, who were obliged to act as syndics in the villages deserted
by the authorities, sometimes as physicians and always
as almoners and missionaries of civilization in the midst of
a people stupefied and exasperated by fear and sufferings,
and fits of fearful passion. This was the case, too, with the
military doctors, upon whom was imposed, in addition to the
care of the soldiers, that of the people, whose prejudices they
were first obliged to destroy, and then overcome their repug-